Search form

Histories of Forgetting

From the late 17th century, disturbances and disruptions of memory loom ever larger in the western social imaginary. From Locke to Freud, individual and collective relations to the past--the very identity and character of persons and institutions--seem increasingly to depend on what has been lost or excluded from memory. In America, forgetting has frequently seemed to many observers like a kind of self-inflicted destiny--at once an inevitable condition and an active pursuit. This course on 18th- and 19th-century American literature and culture remembers, or pieces together, some histories of what Gore Vidal has called the "United States of Amnesia."

We'll begin with the emergence of Lockean epistemology and the plight of modern memory. How much history do you need under liberal rationalism? How much of the past must you possess in order to govern, sympathize, write, love, mourn, fashion an identity, or project a future? Is memory the foundation of the social? Is it inimical to happiness? Who and what must you exclude in order to realize a particular vision of justice or sovereignty or friendship? What's the cost of obtaining the history you most desire, or of ridding your memory of its stupefying encumbrances?

Students will submit periodic response papers and deliver an in-class presentation--the latter in conjunction with an annotated bibliography--and they will write an article-length final essay. The full syllabus (still subject to minor amendment) may be viewed here: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cavitch/781spring11_syllabus.html.